Synthetic Fuels Explained
Climate change is having disastrous effects across the world. High carbon dioxide emission is one of the biggest factors behind this change. Apart from production factories, vehicles are among the contributors to CO2 emission. This raises the question if all mobility can be made electric or shift to fuel cells. In addition to cars, other modes of transportation such as trucks, aeroplanes and ships may remain reliant on fossil fuels even in the future.
One of the solutions to operating vehicles on combustion engines as carbon dioxide-neutral fuel is to use synthetic fuels from CO2 and water using renewables.
Synthetic Fuel (E-Fuel)
Synthetic fuel or electrofuel (e-fuel) is a class of carbon-neutral fuel that can replace regular fuel. The idea is to produce fuel from renewable energy sources rather than the crude oil available from beneath the earth’s surface.
Burning fossil fuel releases carbon dioxide and water. This adds the CO2 stored beneath the Earth into the atmosphere. As a greenhouse gas, it leads to global warming in addition to health problems in humans and animals.
Since the production of synthetic fuels relies on already available elements in the environment, the fuel is climate neutral.
Synthetic Fuel Production
Like your regular fuel, synthetic fuel is made from chains of hydrocarbons. Hence, hydrogen and carbon are primary raw materials for the production of hydrogen-based synthetic fuel.
The process of electrolysis extracts hydrogen from water. This involves passing direct current through water to separate hydrogen and oxygen. Carbon dioxide is extracted from air or recycled from industrial processes. For instance, the operation might require a series of fans to draw in air and filter carbon dioxide for synthetic fuel.
From the chemical processing of hydrogen and CO2, depending on the hydrocarbon composition you can obtain e-fuel as petrol, diesel and kerosene.
Synthetic fuels from recycled CO2 are thus considered environmentally friendly. Additionally, the whole process becomes climate neutral if the electricity needed for extraction is generated from renewable energy sources like solar and wind.
The Need For Synthetic Fuel
Solar and wind energy are not available everywhere. Additionally, there is a need to store such energy in vehicles. Cars operated by batteries or fuel cells do not function with internal combustion engines.
Synthetic fuel on the other hand requires no changes to the current 4-stroke combustion engine. Regular petrol stations can directly adopt synthetic fuel for pumping fuel. This also removes restrictions for fuel access to ships, planes and heavy vehicles as they can just swap to the alternate fuel.
Challenges to Synthetic Fuel
Various research is geared towards the commercial availability of synthetic fuels. Just like wind and solar energy in the early days, processing synthetic fuel is expensive. Apart from the investment in infrastructure for synthetic fuels, the fuel requires more steps in processing as compared to battery and hydrogen fuel cells.
There is also a matter of efficiency. Synthetic fuels might be a good alternative, they generate less energy as compared to natural crude oil. In cars, not all energy makes it to the wheel as there are losses due to braking resistance, wind resistance and rolling resistance. Not to mention the amount of energy wasted in driving essential engine components.
Petrol engine loses up to 75% of its energy before it makes it to the wheel whereas electric cars lose up to 20% of its energy. With regenerative braking, an electric vehicle might even be most efficient in terms of energy losses. This is the reason why electric cars are gaining momentum.
However, the battery alternative is limited to just cars unless we have a breakthrough in battery storage capacity.
Considering synthetic fuels are less efficient than normal petrol, low efficiency and expensive processes are some of the limiting factors. Fortunately, various firms like Bosch and Porsche are still invested in synthetic fuel as they believe to cut down the cost with proper research and better production techniques in due time.
While this becomes a reality, you can check out these fuel delivery services in the UAE to get your vehicle going from the comfort of your homes.
The Future of Synthetic Fuels
As the world is facing the impact of climate change in the form of heatwaves, forest fires and natural disasters. Some experts predict synthetic fuel to become available by 2025 to 2030. Although, large-scale adoption of a new fuel might seem sceptical. The drive for Europe to ban petrol and diesel engine cars by 2035, might just be the motivational factor to stay invested with synthetic fuels.
As the road to cars using synthetic fuels is a long one, the popular options in new or used cars for sale in the UAE are petrol engine vehicles, EVs and hybrids.
Stay tuned to the UAE’s leading auto blogs for more information on car parts, market trends and automotive technology.
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